Deliberate Rip Offs At The App Store – iFlighter Control and Ice Cream Party

I’m all one for starting new trends in the App Store. We’ve all seen how Flight Control took off (literally), which brought on an onslaught of similar games following the same line-drawing concept. While these games, such as Harbor Master, were unique and addictive in their own right, they still weren’t deliberate rip offs. Seeing as how Flight Control led to such success, many developers with half a mind and lack of creativity decided they would throw in their towel and call it a day. Well, if you’re one of these devs who don’t even bother letting their creative juices flow, have no talent and (even worse) zero conscience, what would you do? How about completely rip off the game!

The first case of deliberate rip offs of a popular game is by the wonderful and profound developers at Meson Networks Ltd. These delightful lads have not only kicked Firemint in groin and spat in their face, but also completely knocked off their game Flight Control. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I’m at least smart enough to notice a rip off when I see one. iFlighter Control truly takes the cake (and trophy) on this one. How about copy and paste the description of the app you’re ripping off to make it even more blatantly obvious! I applaud Meson Networks Ltd. for going the extra mile (and keystroke- Command+C on a Mac and Ctrl+C on a PC) to copy and paste Flight Control’s app description as well. Unfortunately, Flight Control’s description contradicts iFlighter Control in respect to the “beautiful graphics and animation” portion. Even though the in-game graphics of iFlighter Control look similar to Flight Control’s visuals (without the quality and polish, obviously), the menu in Meson Network’s knock off looks like barf compared to the clean and highly stylish menu graphics in Flight Control.

But wait, there’s more! It appears another rip off has appeared in the App Store that goes by the name Ice Cream Party.

While not nearly as bad as iFlighter Control when compared to just how much the game was copied off another, Ice Cream Party is still an obvious rip off of Scoops, by Ian Marsh. Though, not surprisingly, this was brought to us by the folks at DS Effects, the very same devs who make it a habit of pumping out crappy games at the app store. However, instead of dodging vegetables, you must dodge cakes, cars, ‘ballons’ (as spelled in the 16 word app description), and anvils (as depicted in the gorgeous screenshot). The last thing I would ever want to do (besides playing this game), is get hit with a 5,000 pound anvil while I’m happily collecting ice cream scoops. With graphics less appetizing than squashed peas, Ice Cream Party will be filling your mouth with garbage faster than you can say, “I want my money back!”.

With Apple’s inconsistency in the whole approval process (and apps getting pulled for that matter), it will be interesting to see just how long games like iFlighter Control and Ice Cream Party will last at the App Store.

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What a bunch of freaking losers. It seems like the masterminds behind Meson Networks can’t even get the process of ripping off a game right. Case in point – their title in the app store is “iFlighter Control”. Then if you look at the screenshot, it’s “iFlight Control”. Come on, make up your bloody mind!

“Ice Cream Party” is not much better… Horrendous graphics and a terrible name for a game. Not that any of this matters. I think once Apple gets word of the public outcry, these two rip offs will be gone faster than you can say “hasta la vista, baby”